Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are a vital benchmark for any business - and construction firms are no exception.
Many companies are focused on backward-looking KPIs such as revenue, profits, and cash metrics. But construction companies can benefit from metrics as projects unfold - such as frequency of inspections, project quality, and rework cost. These metrics probe the health of a project, deliver early warning signals, and help firms develop forward-thinking insights to make proactive business decisions. Visual data can provide a three-dimensional context into KPIs, explaining how and why the project is the way it is. Paired together, visual data and KPIs optimize job sites, create a historical record of a project’s life cycle, and empower teams to identify and resolve issues in real-time.
Drone technology and ground-based videos provide the context and intelligence needed to help businesses understand why and how they can move the needle on their KPIs.
Bid Development: Enhance Win Rates and Profitability
General contractors may already be measuring pending bids in preparation, active prospects, and the probability of winning work. Still, they can take this a step further by managing and improving these metrics by using aerial data from drone software.
Drone technology delivers precise information at a fraction of the time and cost of traditional methods performed by large survey teams. Through DroneDeploy, construction firms capture drone-generated images of sites to create 2D maps and 3D models, which surveyors, estimators, and subcontractors can use to develop plans and precise cost estimates for a bid. By reducing the weeks of data collection, post-processing, and CAD rendering to just days, they can develop more bids in the same amount of time – at lower costs.
Through drone data, general contractors submit bids that demonstrate the depth of their analysis with fewer errors: facilitating trust with owners and enhancing win rates. Projects won are optimized for profitability since the models from DroneDeploy enable them to estimate costs and prices more accurately.
Project Quality: Visual Data Identifies and Documents Issues Early, Mitigating Costly Rework
Improving KPIs focused on project quality reduces rework and mitigates issues that result in cost and schedule overruns. Metrics focused on quality include the number of site inspections conducted, number of defects, and rework costs.
DroneDeploy customers capture aerial images of their job sites, process them into 2D maps and 3D models, and use the data for inspections and progress reporting. Because the software can direct drones to fly the same flight path throughout a project’s duration, construction firms get unprecedented consistency and accuracy.
Teams use these images and analytics to validate as-built versus as-designed work with consistent and auditable aerial data. DroneDeploy also offers an Inspection Workflow where field teams, subcontractors, trades, owners, and other stakeholders can view high-resolution images of job sites, annotate issues, and resolve them.
Ground-level and interior data are likewise crucial for keeping track of progress. DroneDeploy’s 360 Walkthrough enables customers to capture, digitize, and measure every aspect of their projects, from the ground-up, in an all-in-one solution. With this data, project teams and owners can view the project at any altitude or angle.
By combining interior and exterior reality capture in one platform – and integrating seamlessly with BlueBeam, Procore, and Autodesk – teams and stakeholders can quickly identify all impacted regions and generate new design documentation when the reality is misaligned with the plan.
Project Duration: Faster Handoffs and Cash Management with One Source of Truth for Reality Capture
DroneDeploy’s data and ground-level virtual walkthroughs alleviate issues that lead to costly rework and extend project timelines. DroneDeploy’s 360 Walkthrough is built on technology honed from years of processing drone imagery, ensuring it’s blazing-fast, taking minutes instead of hours.
Change orders are inevitable on any project. But with data delivered faster, teams can identify issues, act quickly, and avoid late rework that skyrockets cost overruns and delays.
Additional benefits include communication, alignment, and transparency. By working from the same source of truth, teams reduce miscommunication errors. Minimizing misalignment between as-built and as-planned designs that could lead to rework, especially late in the project when changes are much more expensive, is crucial.
The Pillars of Effective KPI Management with Visual Data Capture: A Complete Platform
Developing the right KPIs is the first step in managing operations to achieve a firm’s goals.
Similar software products generate data from either drones or ground-based 360-degree cameras to document work and improve operations. But they’re often solely point-solutions. Only DroneDeploy is a complete, integrated data capture solution that can support inspection workflows, capture multi-faceted reality across projects, and provide you with the data you need with the fastest proprietary processing engine in the space.
If you’re interested in learning more about DroneDeploy’s integrated platform, preview our construction solutions page, or download our free eBook on managing performance KPIs in construction.
